by Greg Herren
“You served him?” He raised his eyebrows, looked surprised.
Dane flicked ash. “He’s not a minor. And what happened in high school was a long time ago. Billy’s been coming in here for a while. His money’s as good as anyone else’s.”
“And you’re okay with that?”
Dane crushed the cigarette out. “I’m okay with that. Like I said, high school was a long time ago, Finn. Besides, like the district attorney said, I had it coming, didn’t I? Someone like me?”
Finn had the decency to flinch. “I never believed that, or said it, either, you know that, Dane.”
“I know. Any other questions?”
Finn slid down off the barstool. “He said he didn’t go home last night, and you’d vouch for that.”
“He was too drunk to drive home, yeah.” Dane shrugged. “I let him sleep it off on my couch. That a problem?”
“He was on your couch all night long?”
“He was there when I went to bed. He was there when I got up this morning at seven to go to the gym.” Dane shrugged. “I didn’t hear his truck start. I’m a light sleeper.”
Finn just looked at him for a moment, then shook his head. “You’re sure?”
Dane held up his right hand. “Swear to God.”
“I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“I appreciate your concern.”
“Thanks for the Coke. If you think of anything—” Finn turned to go.
“I’ll be sure to let you know.”
Dane watched him walk out of the. He lit another cigarette, and this time his hand shook.
Billy Werner had come in the night before, around nine o’clock, a purplish bruise on his forehead. He’d been wearing a white ribbed tank top and a tight pair of jeans worn through in places—the knees, the cuffs, just under the curve of his left ass cheek. He’d always been sexy, even in the seventh grade all those years ago when Dane used to sneak looks at him in the shower. His dad was a minister, and part of his ministry was your body is your temple to God, so all of his kids exercised, lifted weights, jogged. Billy had abs you could slice your finger on when he was thirteen, a bubble butt, veins that bulged over the lean muscles of his arms. He also had an acne problem, so despite the strong jaw with a dimple in the center and the bright blue eyes, the lightly tanned skin and the body, Billy never had much luck with girls. Being the son of a minister who also owned a used-car lot didn’t help much either. He was a nice kid, not too bright, but when Dane was alone in his bed at night he’d think about the way Billy looked in the showers, in the locker room, in his underwear, until he ached down there and had to do something about it. He’d always watched Billy, marveling at the graceful way he moved, how he walked on the balls of his feet so he kind of bounced with every step.
And Billy wasn’t the ringleader. He wasn’t sure Billy even hit him.
He was just…there.
“What’d you do to your forehead?” Dane asked, opening a bottle of Bud Light, Billy’s usual. Billy had taken to coming in to My Place a couple of times a week. It had been a little awkward that first time, sure. How do you serve one of the guys who gay-bashed you back in high school without it being a little weird? But Billy had never bullied him, Billy had never called him fag, Billy had just gone along with the other guys…
He’d just been there.
It was easier to believe that, wasn’t it?
Billy had always…always been nice to him.
And it had just been a little kiss.
“Hit it on an open cabinet door.” Billy took a drink and grinned sheepishly. “You know me, clumsy as ever.”
“Kaylee didn’t hit you with a frying pan?” He was joking, but only a little bit. He didn’t put much past Billy’s wife.
Kaylee Werner had a temper, always had, even back in high school. She had a mean streak, would get a glint in her eye that spelled danger for whoever had provoked it.
Dane always believed it was Kaylee behind it all.
He and Billy had been friends since they were kids.
It was just one little kiss…he thought she’d seen it that night on the beach but couldn’t be sure. She’d called hello, and they’d sprung away from each other. She didn’t say anything, just smiled, eyes glittering, as she took Billy by the hand and led him away, gave him a little wave as they disappeared behind a sand dune.
He wasn’t sure until some of the guys on the football team—and Billy—cornered him that day in the locker room.
He thought they were going to kill him.
But Billy—Billy just looked sick when they threw him up against the lockers so hard it knocked his breath out, his head slamming against the metal. As they started kicking and punching and he slid down to the ground, Billy just stood there.
He hadn’t said anything, didn’t throw a punch.
But he was there. He hadn’t tried to stop them, either.
He hadn’t gone back to school after the janitor found him there in the locker room, called an ambulance, repeated his story through bruised lips and broken teeth again and again, and for what?
No charges filed. They didn’t even get suspended.
No, he’d dropped out and gone to work at McDonald’s. He’d see them here and there, Billy and Kaylee, spoiled princess in her yellow Mustang with her prize driving around town. He missed Billy, missed his old friend, remembered that night on the beach in the moonlight when their lips had touched for just a moment…
Kaylee got pregnant their senior year, and they got married at City Hall right before graduation. Her parents disowned her, and Billy was stuck married to an angry, bitter woman who hated her life and blamed him for everything. And Billy got a job as a mechanic working at the Firestone, changing oil or fixing tires.
The town was too small for Dane not to know everything that was going on with them. Everyone knew everyone and everyone knew everyone’s business.
So, it wasn’t an accident that first night when Billy turned up at My Place. He knew that as sure as he knew Billy’s beer was $3.75.
It took several visits for Billy to start telling Dane his woes.
It took several more before Dane stopped enjoying hearing about Billy’s pain and started feeling sorry for him.
And it didn’t take long for him to feel his old attraction to Billy again. It hadn’t ever gone away. Despite everything.
And thinking maybe, just maybe, Billy felt the same way, maybe he always had. He’d only pulled away from the kiss all those years ago when they heard Kaylee calling. He’d closed his eyes and kissed back, hadn’t he? Dane wasn’t remembering that wrong.
“No.” Billy laughed but looked away, wouldn’t meet his eyes. Which meant she had gotten violent again.
It wasn’t the first time. She’d hit him before, thrown things at him, and there was a scar on his side where she’d come at him with a knife in one of her rages. “Why don’t you leave her?” Dane had asked when Billy had pulled up his shirt to show him that scar, noticing the lightly tanned skin, the still-defined abdominal muscles, how deep the line from his hip bone heading into his groin was before it disappeared into the jeans. Billy shook his head. “She’s on the outs with her parents, but they want her to leave me,” Billy said mournfully. “She’ll get everything if I walk out on her. Her dad will see to it. And who’d believe me?” His face flushed. “I mean, what kind of man lets a woman hit him?”
What kind of man lets a woman hit him.
Dane poured out a shot for Billy, slid it across the bar to him. “You need this.”
“No, man, I can’t. I’ve got to be able to drive home.”
“You can’t go back there, man. She’s going to kill you one of these times.”
Billy looked at him for a long minute, then picked up the shot glass.
“You can stay at my place tonight.” Dane held up his hands. “You can sleep on the couch, or I can. Nothing more than that, man. Just a place to stay the night.”
Billy downed the shot and turned the
glass upside down, snapping it down on the bar. He looked Dane right in the eye and said, “That’s not what I want and you know it.”
It was raining the first night Billy was too drunk to drive back home. Kaylee was on a girls’ weekend with some of her old friends, off to a beachfront condo in Panama City Beach with some of her buddies, who felt sorry for her in the dead end she’d wound up in, too stubborn to admit she’d made a mistake and go back to her parents, “bitches,” Billy had slurred over his fourth or fifth beer, “who’re too good to set foot in our house. They make her crazy, you know, they always make her feel bad about herself and then I’m the one who has to pay for it.” He’d taken Billy’s keys from him around midnight, told Billy he could crash in the trailer that night.
Maybe he’d known then what would happen that night. Maybe he’d hoped, maybe he’d planned, maybe.
He’d never forget how Billy looked when he took his wet shirt off in the trailer, the way the overhead light made the beads of water on his smooth, muscular chest glisten like diamonds, the way he’d almost fallen over taking his jeans off, how hot his skin had felt to the touch when Dane caught him to keep him from falling.
Later, Billy said he’d been drunk, hadn’t known what he was doing, was sorry and it could never happen again.
In a way, Dane thought as he got another beer from the cooler for Jed Mathews, Kaylee was my fault. If we hadn’t gotten drunk that night on the beach when we were camping, if we hadn’t kissed and gotten caught, he wouldn’t have been so scared, he might not have stayed with Kaylee to prove he wasn’t like me. Wouldn’t have slept with her to prove he wasn’t like me.
But he was like me.
And there was the insurance. Kaylee made sure the insurance on the house was paid every month. They had a gas stove and an old gas hot water heater. Billy was always complaining how old the lines were, how dangerous they were.
Almost—almost like he was hinting.
Billy was snoring softly when Dane slipped out of the bed that morning. The moonlight coming through the blind made slashes of blue light across his torso, and he knew he shouldn’t do this, but it was what he wanted, wasn’t it?
And the money—the money could make such a difference. For them both.
He picked up Billy’s truck keys off the kitchen table. He worried the sound of the starting engine might wake Billy, but there was no sign of life through the trailer windows once he turned the ignition key. He drove over to the little cinderblock house on Bayshore Road Kaylee had inherited from her great-aunt, the moon reflecting on the smooth waters of the bay out past the backyard. Not only was there insurance, but the land was worth a lot because it fronted on the water, some Yankees would pay a lot of money for that plot of land, and there was insurance on Kaylee, too, Billy had told him that not so long ago one night he had life insurance on her.
Letting things slip, here and there. Letting him know.
Accidents happened every day, didn’t they? That’s what insurance was for.
The house was dark and he’d been there before, another weekend when she’d gone off to visit one of her old friends from high school, taken her beat-up little car and driven down to Gainesville. He used the pencil flashlight to unlock the door and slip inside. She was snoring in the bedroom, an empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s on the kitchen table next to an ashtray filled with lipstick-stained cigarette butts. She was passed out, dead drunk.
He made his way over to the stove. He knelt down and, with his pencil flashlight, found the pilot light and blew it out. He stood back up and turned all the burners on.
He turned them back off.
That wouldn’t work. They might be able to tell that the burners had been on.
No one would believe she killed herself.
He walked through the kitchen to the Florida room and shone his light around. The hot water heater was hidden behind a screen. All the jalousie windows were closed tight. He moved behind the screen and shone his light down on the gas line. He pushed it with his foot. It looked frayed. He started to use his pen knife on it, but stopped.
No, turning the oven on made the most sense. He carefully shut the door between the rooms and turned the oven on, up to 400 degrees. He could hear the ticking of the gas line. He opened the freezer and yes, there was a frozen pizza. He carefully opened the box, put it down on the table next to the bottle, and placed the pizza inside the oven. He could already smell the lethal gas.
The house reeked of cigarettes, sometimes he could smell them on Billy’s clothes. She’d light one when she woke up and…
Billy would be free.
She got drunk, put a pizza in the oven, and passed out, never noticing the pilot had gone out.
He got up at seven to go to the gym, and when he got back Billy was gone. There was a note: went to work, have to be there at eight.
He dropped it into an ashtray and lit it with his cigarette lighter.
He spent the day cleaning the trailer and doing his laundry, eyes on his phone. But it never rang, never chimed with a text. And then he’d come to work.
Dane handed Jed his change. Jed pocketed the money, no tip. The cheap old bastard never tipped.
Kaylee was dead now. She’d never hit Billy or cut him again.
He remembered how her eyes had glittered that night she came up on him and Billy on the beach.
She’d gotten those boys to beat him, he’d never doubted that. It was the kind of thing she did and laughed about later.
He closed the bar at one, half-heartedly went over the floor with a broom, counted the money, and dropped it into the safe. He’d only made about fifty bucks in tips that night, give or take, but that was fine. He locked up and walked the path back to his trailer.
Billy was sitting on the steps. He stood up when Dane came around the bend. “What did you do?” he whispered hoarsely.
Dane dropped his cigarette into the sand, unlocked his door, and held it open. “What do you mean?” he said, watching Billy’s ass flex in his jeans as he climbed the steps and went into the trailer. “Seems like your house blew up this morning.”
“What did you do?” Billy’s face was pale, his eyes bloodshot, his hair greasy and slicked back. He nervously ran one of his big hands through it, shaking his head.
“You were here with me all night,” Dane said, sitting down and lighting another cigarette. “I told the cops you slept on my couch and you were here when I went to the gym at seven. Kaylee was a drunk, everyone knows it. It’s not a surprise she’d blow herself up like that.”
“Why?”
“I did it for you, Billy.” NO, I did it for us, but this isn’t going the way I wanted it to. What’s wrong with him?
“I didn’t ask you to.”
“No, but—”
Billy got up. “I’ve got to get out of here.”
“Billy—”
The door slammed against the side of the trailer and bounced back, not shutting, swinging as Billy ran down the sand path.
Dane stubbed out his cigarette.
He’d come back.
He always did.
Besides, he had that picture he’d taken of Billy’s truck out in front of the house at four in the morning.
He was getting that money one way or another.
He smiled.
Annunciation Shotgun
“I swear, I didn’t mean to kill him!”
If ever a person was meant to come with a warning label, it was my tenant, Phillip. He’d been renting the other side of my double shotgun in the lower Garden District for two years now, and while he was a good tenant—always paid his rent on time, never made a lot of noise in the wee hours of the morning, and even ran errands for me from time to time—chaos always seemed to follow in his wake. He doesn’t do it intentionally. He’s actually a very sweet guy with a big heart and a great sense of humor, and he’s a lot of fun to have around. Every morning, before he went to work, he’d come over for coffee and fill me in on the latest goings-on in his life. I u
sually just rolled my eyes and shook my head—there wasn’t much else to do, really. The kind of stuff that would drive me absolutely insane seemed to roll off him like water off a duck. For all his good heart and good intent, somehow things always seem to happen whenever he’s around. Bad things. He attracts them like a magnet attracts nails.
I knew I should have evicted him after the hurricane when I had the chance.
I looked from the body on the kitchen floor over to where he was standing by the stove and back again. I don’t need this, I thought. My evening was planned to the second. My new book, the latest (and hopefully biggest selling) suspense thriller from Anthony Andrews, was due to my editor in three days. I was finishing up the revisions, and when I was too bleary eyed to stare at the computer screen any longer, I was going to open a bottle of red wine, smoke some pot, and throw the third season of The Sopranos into the DVD player. A very nice, pleasant quiet evening at home; the kind that made me happy and enabled me to focus on my work. After a long day staring at the computer until the words started swimming in front of your eyes, there’s nothing quite like some pot and red wine to help shut your mind down and relax. When Phillip had called, panic in his voice, demanding that I come over immediately, I’d thought it was a plugged toilet or something else minor but highly annoying. I’d put my computer to sleep and headed over, figuring I could take care of whatever it was and be back in front of the computer in five minutes, cursing him with every step for interrupting my evening.
A dead body was the last thing I was expecting.
“Um, we need to call the cops.” I shook my head, forcing myself to look away from the body and back over at Phillip. I felt kind of numb, like I was observing everything from a distance and was not a part of it. Shock, probably. Phillip’s eyes were still kind of wild, wide open and streaked with red, his curly hair disheveled, his face white and glistening with a glassy sheen of sweat. “We need to call the cops like right now.” I raised my voice. “Are you listening to me?”
He didn’t move or answer me. He just kept standing there looking down at the floor, occasionally shifting his weight from one leg to the other. There was a bruise forming on his right cheek, and his lips looked puffy and swollen. I looked back at the body. I hadn’t, in my initial shock and horror, recognized the man sprawled on the floor with a spreading pool of blood underneath his head. “You killed Chad,” I heard myself saying, thinking this isn’t happening, this can’t be happening, oh jesus mary and joseph, this isn’t happening.
